An intelligent and blind image watermarking scheme based on hybrid SVD transforms using human visual system characteristics

Abstract

This paper presents a new intelligent image watermarking scheme based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and singular values decomposition (SVD) using human visual system (HVS) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). The cover image is transformed by one-level (DWT) and subsequently the LL sub-band of (DWT) transformed image is chosen for embedding. To achieve the highest possible visual quality, the embedding regions are selected based on (HVS). After applying (SVD) on the selected regions, every two watermark bits are embedded indirectly into the U and $$V^{t}$$ components of SVD decomposition of the selected regions, instead of embedding one watermark bit into the U component and compensating on the $$V^{t}$$ component that results in twice capacity and reasonable imperceptibility. In addition, for increasing the robustness without losing the transparency, the scaling factors are chosen automatically by (PSO) based on the attacks test results and predefined conditions, instead of using fixed or manually set scaling factors for all different cover images. Experimental and comparative results demonstrated the stability and improved performance of the proposed scheme compared to its parents watermarking schemes. Moreover, the proposed scheme is free of false positive detection error.